1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a computer-readable recording device for processing an intraluminal image captured by picking up an image within a lumen.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an endoscope is widely used as a medical observation device that is introduced into the body of a person being tested such as a patient and that noninvasively observes inside of a lumen. In recent years, a swallow-type endoscope (a capsule endoscope) is also being developed that accommodates an imaging device, a communication device, and the like in a capsule-shape casing and that radio transmits image data captured by the imaging device to outside of the body. A series of images (intraluminal images) captured by the medical observation device reach an enormously large number (more than tens of thousands), and great deal of experience is necessary to observe and diagnose each intraluminal image. Therefore, a medical diagnosis support function that supports diagnosis of a doctor is desired. As one of image recognizing techniques to achieve this function, there is proposed a technique for automatically detecting an abnormal part from an intraluminal image and for indicating an image that needs to be diagnosed selectively.
Meanwhile, to detect an abnormal part by image recognition, as a preprocessing, it is important to extract a mucosal region by removing a region requiring no observation (an unnecessary region) that reflects a residue and the like. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-166939, for example, an image processing method for detecting presence, in a predetermined region to be processed set for a captured image of biological mucosa, of a specific biological mucosa on the basis of color tone feature data of a pixel is disclosed.